Palm Sunday this year at St. Joseph’s Parish in Beirut, Lebanon, was celebrated by Christians in most ways just like it has been for centuries—crowds waving verdant palm fronds, a blessing with holy water, children from the community excited to assist as servers at Mass.
But because of the wars in Iran and Lebanon, Palm Sunday Mass at St. Joseph’s this year had to include a few changes. Attendance was limited because large sections of the church building have been transformed into a makeshift shelter for people displaced by this latest round of Israel-Hezbollah fighting. The outdoor procession had to be rerouted to navigate church grounds now crowded with cots and sleeping bags.
These adjustments, however, did nothing to dampen the joyful mood of this gathering of Beirut’s small-but-active English-speaking Latin Rite Catholic population. The group, which includes people from Africa and East Asia, represents a tiny minority in a country where most people are either Orthodox Christians, Maronite and Eastern Rite Catholics, or Sunni or Shiite Muslims.
Loren Capobres spoke by phone from Beirut. “We gathered like usual; we processed. It wasn’t perfect—we had to make some changes for Holy Week,” she said.
“But it’s O.K. The church [was] packed, and [it was] an amazing celebration. The focus is the Lord, and we are welcoming the Lord, staying strong, because he is always there for us.”
A hidden Christian community
Ms. Capobres arrived in Lebanon 17 years ago from the Philippines, finding employment as a domestic worker, and has been a lay leader at the Jesuit-run parish for almost as long. She serves as a lector and often sings the psalms at Mass. On the job six days a week, she often spends evenings and her single week day off each week at the church.
The Arrupe Migrant Center, sponsored by the Jesuit Relief Service, is adjacent to the church. The center serves the large migrant-worker and refugee populations in the Lebanese capital. It offers food assistance, humanitarian and health aid and social support in normal times, but its presence becomes crucial during times of war.
The ongoing conflict between the Israeli military and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia has deeply affected Lebanon’s most marginalized populations. Among them are the foreign domestic workers and refugees who have long made Beirut their home. Airstrikes have killed hundreds of people across the region; many among the casualties have been immigrant workers and refugees.
In addition to her contributions at the parish, Ms. Capobres also serves the city’s migrants and refugees through the center. She recalls how Arrupe’s work accelerated in September 2024 during the last significant outbreak of conflict between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces.
The church was transformed then into an emergency shelter “because so many people [ran] from their place that was targeted by the war. They all come to the church, so we cannot say no.”
Two years later, just about every corner of the church has again been converted into shelter space, housing and feeding some of the nation’s more than one million displaced people. As foreign nationals, those sheltering at St. Joseph’s cannot count on social support from the hard-pressed Lebanese government.
Instead, “we help them; we cook; we give their basic needs. We try to give them a home,” Ms. Capobres said. “It’s my passion. Just seeing them safe, I’m happy.”
Months earlier, Ms. Capobres had experienced something she still struggles to fully describe: a personal encounter with Pope Leo XIV during his visit to Beirut. Sharing her story with Leo and a large audience gathered at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lebanon in Harissa last December, “everything stopped,” she recalled. “It was only me and him.”
Then, a single phrase from the pope to the woman who has become a leader in her community: “Be strong.” She has held onto those words ever since.
“It’s like that word was preparing me for what is happening now. I think of it and I think of the Lord calling us to be strong.”
Michael Petro, S.J., the project director for J.R.S. in Lebanon, spoke to America during Holy Week. He explained that even before the recent violence, migrants and refugees in Lebanon already faced deeply precarious circumstances. Lebanon hosts the world’s highest per capita concentration of refugees, including an estimated 1.3 million Syrians and 200,000 Palestinians, alongside the 170,000 voluntary migrant workers from countries like Ethiopia, Nigeria, the Philippines, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Each of these communities is prone to discrimination and vulnerable to exploitation. Human trafficking is rampant, meaning many who have arrived in Lebanon may be trapped in servitude. A visa system that ties domestic workers to a single household easily gives way to exploitation. This vulnerability, compounded by an ongoing national economic crisis, lack of legal status and regional hostilities, means there is a greater strain on Jesuit Refugee Service than ever before.
“A preferential option for migrant workers and refugees has been a mission of the Jesuits for the last 40 years, making a space for migrant workers here in Beirut,” Brother Petro said. “We serve people of all faiths and provide material needs, but this is also an active parish that has a pastoral responsibility for the faith and spiritual well-being of Catholics who happen to be living in Lebanon.”
‘A world that’s broken’
The parish center is a gathering space for a diverse group of migrant communities. It even makes room for Sri Lankan Buddhists to meet for prayer. The largest religious demographic the shelter hosts is Muslim, primarily people from East Africa and South Asia. They are among about 200 living in the parish shelter because of the war.
“During Ramadan, our parish staff were getting up in the middle of the night to prepare the pre-dawn meal for the Muslim men, women and children staying in our church,” Brother Petro said. “I think that relationships between Muslims and Christians are often more possible on the edges, so in migrant communities that can work.”
Brother Petro said that relationships between Muslims and Christians—often strained in communities across Africa and the Middle East—are in some ways more possible here in Lebanon, where migrants and refugees face common experiences of displacement and conflict.
He described the friendships that have emerged among Sudanese and South Sudanese women from different faith and ethnic backgrounds who come together at Arrupe. Back in their home nations, their communities may endure tension and resentment, but in Lebanon, living through a different conflict together, they have become close friends.
Amid Beirut’s calamity, Brother Petro shared where he is finding God these days. “The image of God who is with us in suffering is not the image that I want, but it is the image I have,” he said. “The Lord is sitting in our shelter—that’s uncomfortable, but that’s where the grace is.” He explains that too often Christians forget that the turmoil among the early faithful did not end on Easter.
“The Resurrection happens in a world that’s broken,” Brother Petro said.
A week after St. Joseph’s memorable Palm Sunday Mass, less than 200 miles south, Catholics gathered in Tel Aviv for Easter Mass at Our Lady Woman of Valor Pastoral Center. Much like their brothers and sisters in Lebanon, for Christians at the margins in Israel, the feast marking the faith’s central mystery took on a subdued tone.
The English-speaking migrant community in Israel—primarily Filipino, South Asian and East African domestic, agricultural and hospitality sector workers and asylum seekers—celebrated the Triduum and Easter feast not in a church filled with light, but below ground level, sheltering from Iranian and Hezbollah rocket fire and missile strikes in the city’s Central Bus Station where entire floors have been converted into makeshift bomb shelters.
Father Piotr Zelazko is the vicar general of the Latin Patriarchate for Hebrew‑speaking Catholics in Israel. He told America the symbolism of Easter celebrated in a shelter is hard to ignore.
“You are underground for the most important Christian feast of the year, celebrating Christ’s resurrection from the dead and rising from the tomb,” he said. “And you have to preach about the light from underground.”
In both Lebanon and Israel, strong opposition to armed conflict and calls for peace persist amid the violence of war. Communities that might otherwise have little in common share similar experiences—fearing for their children’s safety, sheltering in place, worrying over economic and psychological turmoil. These war conditions are dire for all civilians, but they are exacerbated for migrants in Lebanon and Israel because of their status.
Seeking shelter
Approximately 35,000 Catholics live in Israel, alongside 150,000 other Christians, primarily Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel who are Greek Orthodox. An estimated 300,000 total foreign workers also live in the country. A majority of them are Christians, but others are Muslims, Hindus and people of other faiths. There is also a large population of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers, primarily living in Tel Aviv.
Father Zelazko said that more than three years of near constant conflict—now exacerbated by war with Iran—has been devastating on both sides and has shaped the life of the people he ministers to. His community includes a growing young adult population of Hebrew-speaking Filipino Catholics, descendants of migrant workers born and raised in Israel. Their parents, who primarily speak Tagalog and English, have formed close relationships with Father Zelazko’s Latin Christian vicariate.
“I discovered that many of the Filipino families have no shelter near their apartments. And since the rocket alarms in Israel [sound] so often, they decided to move into the public bomb shelter.” Father Zelazko explained that shelter—a bus station mostly known for drug sales and abuse, crime and prostitution—is now the site of a make-shift sanctuary to celebrate Mass underground created by the Christian migrant community.
For Israel’s migrant worker community, life is precarious—shaped by temporary labor, legal uncertainty and, over the last three years, war.
“The first big challenge is that many of these families or some of the members of the families cannot work due to the war,” Father Zelazko said. Restaurants and hotels are closed. Jobs in service or office and home cleaning have been suspended. These income interruptions, he pointed out, have “lasted off and on for three years.”
For the last five weeks, Iranian rockets have been launched into Israel and the Palestinian territories every day, often multiple times per day. At least three dozen civilians have been killed and thousands displaced.
“The economic toll is immediate, but the deeper costs are harder to measure,” Father Zelazko said, describing a recent visit to a family in Beersheba whose home was damaged by a nearby missile strike. Windows shattered. Furniture destroyed. These, he said, can be replaced.
“But the fear in their eyes,” he said, “that will stay.” Children no longer sleep through the night. Parents hesitate to leave their homes. Even in cities less frequently targeted, blaring sirens create a constant, low-grade terror.
And for migrants, the vulnerability is compounded. Without health insurance, a medical emergency can be a financial catastrophe. When one Filipino father recently suffered a stroke, his family faced overwhelming hospital bills. The church intervened, negotiating costs, raising funds and mobilizing support from abroad. But these are stopgaps, not solutions.
All you can do as a pastor sometimes, Father Zelazko said, is work to unite people and bring them comfort.
“Recently, in the shelter, we asked one lady to bring coffee; I brought cookies, somebody brought strawberries. Somebody entered the shelter with this boombox music, and we all just started to dance. It was so spontaneous as we shared that moment of joy,” he said.
Friendships across faiths
Much as in Beirut Brother Petro described relationships established during Lent and Ramadan amid war, Father Zelazko said that his partnerships with Jewish communal leaders, rabbis and faith-based charities in Israel have provided invaluable support amid crisis after crisis.
“These friendships mean the world to me, people I’ve known and worked with for years,” Father Zelazko said. “You should know how many rabbis and lay people, Jewish friends called me or texted me after the incident with the Latin Patriarch being stopped and [not permitted to] enter the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher. Many rabbis, many friends, they just said: ‘I’m sorry, I feel terrible. This is something that should not happen.’”
Suffering, he continued, unites people across faiths.
Father Zelazko recalled celebrating Christmas Mass in a prison, preaching about hope in a dim, crowded room. Men hardened by life wept openly as they sang “Silent Night” in multiple languages. “That was one of the most beautiful moments of my priesthood,” he said.
Speaking on Holy Monday, he told America he expected similar heightened emotions this Easter. If conditions allowed, he hoped that families could emerge briefly for a festive barbecue at the entrance to their bomb shelter—ready to run back underground at the sound of a siren.
“It’s about being together,” he said. “Even for a moment.”
Beyond the immediate needs of his community, Father Zelazko is increasingly concerned about the collapse of support systems around them. Nongovernmental groups serving migrants and asylum seekers in Israel have seen funding slashed by as much as 70 percent because of reductions in foreign assistance, primarily the loss of funding previously disbursed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, shuttered by the Trump administration. At the same time, because of the conflict and the displacement it has engendered, demand for services has surged.
“The needs are increasing 120 percent,” he said. In response, the church has begun to expand its usual role—seeking resources not only for its own communities but for humanitarian groups themselves. “It’s a moment to be creative,” he said. “To find who can help, and how.”
Tali Ehrenthal is the director of Aid Organization for Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Israel. She has closely partnered with Father Zelazko and has worked in collaboration with the Catholic Church to locate lodging and shelter for migrants and asylum seekers like those who have sheltered at the Tel Aviv bus station.
From Beirut to Tel Aviv, Ramallah to Haifa, the region’s widening conflict is reshaping daily life for migrant and refugee communities already living at the margins. Ms. Ehrenthal described not only the strain of war but the rapid unraveling of fragile support systems.
Her organization serves some of the most vulnerable people in Israel—survivors of torture and trafficking, at-risk minors, the elderly and people with serious health conditions. Over the last year, cuts to U.S. assistance and the collapse of key United Nations programs have disrupted services across the region, while some international donors have been barred from Gaza operations due to alleged collaboration with Hamas militants. Other aid organizations have withdrawn from Israel in protest of the Gaza war.
The escalating humanitarian crisis
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees recently and abruptly ended all support for refugee aid organizations in Israel, including its support for ASSAF. This, Ms. Ehrenthal said, is hurting the most vulnerable, the migrant workers, who are enduring a war they did not ask for.
Refugees face the full impact of conflict—missile attacks, economic disruption and psychological stress—without formal protection. “To be a refugee,” Ms. Ehrenthal said, “is to exist outside the social contract.” As jobs disappear and incomes vanish, many endure food insecurity and homelessness. Resilience, she said, is the fruit of solidarity established by years of partnerships with Catholic and Jewish nonprofits that support migrant communities across the Middle East.
Back in Beirut, Ms. Capobres said there is one thing she wants the world to know about migrants like herself: “Our capability is not limited,” she said. “We can help. We can do our purpose, serve others even while we are working.”
The assertion challenges the framing of migrant life in the Middle East, where workers are often reduced to their economic function. But in Ms. Capobres’s experience, migrants are not only recipients of care—they are agents of it. They are not only the displaced but also the builders of community.
The vocation Ms. Capobres has found is simple but demanding. “Always remember that God is love,” she said. “And that love should be spread to everyone—whoever they are, wherever they are.”
In a crowded church doubling as a shelter in a city living through war, faith is lived in service; a migrant worker taking blood pressure readings, cooking meals, counting beds; a woman who heard a pope say “be strong” and chose to stay.
“All these theological and liturgical discussions,” Father Zelazko marveled. “I say, ‘Just look up, just look around.’ Christ is knocking on our doors.”
Christ is hungry, he said. Christ is without a job; Christ is frightened.
“He is walking our streets as a migrant or refugee, and we don’t see him,” Father Zelazko said. “Just look around. This is the real message of Christianity.”
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